It's about time for GitHub...

[Ter.Yeah]

Paradox:
- You have a great fanbase. So many people who enjoy your games and love grand strategy.
- It is clear that these games are complicated. There's a lot of moving parts, that move other parts, that move other parts...
- Perhaps it's time to get some free help to some of the ominous difficult bugs that are afflicting us all right now.
- Did you consider open-sourcing the engine and parts of the game since the next game will be using a new engine?
- I hear GitHub is free
- We are an army of software engineers out here that could potentially lend a thousand extra eyes on potential issues that cost your company a lot, - and for free!

Just sayin', it's rare to have free labor. Why not use it?

 

[rubert]

I seriously doubt Paradox is going to open their source code to the public. Maybe for some really old games but for current ones or previous "generation"? Not going to happen.

 

[Ter.Yeah]

I understand that it is unlikely, but you never know. I work in a large energy company, and even we are open-sourcing all new software products, even if they cost a hundred million dollars to develop and might give away a competitive advantage. No single company has all the best developers in the world. Sure, some developers might "steal" ideas or code, but as the developers of Stellaris would understand, - it takes a huge investment of time and money to establish (and maintain) a competitor at this stage. We're too far down the road. Open-source really builds more bridges than it burns, even in game development.

 

[Kravoka]

The possibility of someone figuring out how to reenable Warp Drive is too great for Paradox to allow.

 

[Dalwin]

The possibility of someone figuring out how to reenable Warp Drive is too great for Paradox to allow.

I could re-enable warp drive in about 2 minutes and so could you. naturally we'd be stuck playing version 1.3 or whatever at that point, but just saying.

 

[Ter.Yeah]

I notice that many people disagree. That's fair, I kind of expected that. For some, "Open source" seems dangerous, even suicidal. But you have to remember that open-source does not equal freeware. You can still license after your own choosing. And for those that think that sentence just seems condescending, (I would) - Then I would like to hear your arguments for the disagreements

I have an example. Some years ago, before git and github was the defacto source-control paradigm, there was this company called Firaxis. I am sure most of you are familiar with them, but for those who aren't, it was the company founded by Sid Meier, - and the creators of the civilization franchise. Now, they had issues with their world-generation algorithm in civilization IV. They did not fully open-source the code, but rather they opened it to interested software developers. The result was that a friend of mine optimized their algorithm by a whooping ~500% and got his name listed in the credits of the game. The credits of the game, that was the sole cost of his work, for an immense optimization of an algorithm. There are very obvious economical benefits with reaching for outside help for things like performance (which is not really what you want your inhouse developers working on), and very very few drawbacks.

 

[Nocty1501]

Strange to see so many disagrees with the OP. Of course, from a business standpoint, this is a terrible idea, but OP is right - Paradox has a dedicated fanbase, and they should be allowed to contribute to the game's development more. Megacorp is a disaster with many game-breaking bugs, which could have been ironed out if only Paradox had the fans' support throughout development.

 

[Mr. Capiatlist]

I don't see the usefulness of this thread.